Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate.

Q&A with Chris Pine and Alex Kurtzman

Earlier this month I sat down with Jason Roestel from Examiner.com to talk with director/write Alex Kurtzman and actor Chris Pine about their new film People Like Us. I tried not to geek out to much because Kurtzman is co-creator of, one of my favorite shows, Fringe and Chris Pine is Captain Kirk.

The movie is based on an experience in Alex’s life. The films honest look at family and grief opened up our conversation to everything from the importance of music in the film, to present/non-present family relationships, and even battling Magic Mike in the boxoffice.

I was reading the notes for the movie and it was based on [Alex Kurtzman’s] life. The movie had sort of a Cameron Crowe feel. You had all this great rock music. How cool was that?

Alex Kurtzman: The best. It was funny because it took a long time to write the script and over the course of 8 years, I got to think about the music. The truth is there are 20,000 songs that didn’t make it into the movie. Cameron Crowe is one of my heroes and I always loved what he did with music. It wasn’t just because he chose great music, but there was such an eclectic mix. The music represented different characters and the different eras. His love for music was so clearly on the screen.

You got to show off your taste a little bit.

AK: In the case of People Like Us, there was music that was of the Jerry Harper era that represented LA and the world he grew up in. Then there was some Sam music, some Frankie music, and then Josh music. Then there was the score that was very different than the songs that we chose. Music is like the fifth character in the movie so I loved the opportunity to tell a story about the characters through the music.

Chris, what was it like getting into your character Sam. Dealing with the loss of his dad but not having a good relationship with him?

Chris Pine: Jerry was a difficult character because he affects everyone in the film, but he’s not there. I think what was really important, what Alex stressed, and what we had the luxury of having was a longer rehearsal time. We had two weeks to rehearse and the actors would meet in twosomes, all for of us would meet or three of us would meet. We all had enough time together and figure out this incredible past that all of us shared. Especially that first scene when I walk in on Lillian [Michelle Pfeiffer] in the kitchen, there’s so much tension and awkward weirdness. I knew that it had to be charged but all of it unspoken. The whole journey for Sam is to talk and he’s not able to really communicate with anyone.

Were the female leads already planned?

AK: No, in fact it all radiated outward from Chris [Pine]. I knew I had to cast Sam first and the people in his life around that. Some of that was casting just based on genetics. Way past that, I was looking for very specific qualities from each person. Lillian I felt would be a character to easily demonize, she could be the bad guy in the piece and that’s the last thing I wanted. I felt strongly that it needed to be an actress who could maintain and protect their belief that they were doing the right thing at the time but also become so vulnerable at the end.

I talked to a lot of people and what Elizabeth [Banks] did that was so brilliant, when she came in I gave her two monologues, the AA speech and the laundry mat, and she threw them away. Rather than play the heavy drama of the moment, you were watching this person talk about it and pretending they weren’t really affected. What you were watching was someone who had built up so many walls and didn’t really talk about this with anybody. During the audition, I felt like I was watching someone who was trying very hard not to have the words mean what they meant, but as they continue on you realize how much she’s letting them in and how raw and vulnerable she is. The other thing about Elizabeth is she’s an unbelievable comedian. She can spin anything in so many different ways. She can add humor to it and balance it, and I really wanted that for Frankie. Humor for all the characters was their armor in a lot of ways.

Olivia [Wilde] and I worked together on a movie before and she’s so wonderful, kind, openhearted, sweet, and thoughtful. She cares about everything in the world and is so active. I felt like Hannah gives the audience faith that Sam can be a good guy. You have to like her right away and go ‘Wow. He could’ve chose anyone, but he chose that one’. It’s not just because she’s beautiful, but she’s trying her best to have him be a real guy. She sees something in him that she knows will come out.

I got from the movie that the father is a little bit demonized too, but there’s also good. He trusted [Chris Pine’s] character with the money.

AK: I think one of the things about the story that was so important, and part of why it took 8 years to figure out, is every character was flawed and totally understandable. No matter how you may have initially judged them, by the time you go through the journey of the movie your perspective might change about who they were. It’s a ghost story in a lot of ways with Jerry; he’s haunting everyone in the movie. His children are caring such feelings about him, but over the course of the movie there was so much going on that even Jerry couldn’t articulate. The act of bringing his children together with the money was the act of trying to bridge that gap. Sam can’t see that right away, he’s just angry because he thinks the money should be his. He starts to understand there may be more to his dad than he thought. He was justifiably angry that he was shutout, but there’s a line in the movie where Sam says ‘I get it because every time he looked at me, he saw her’. You start to realize that he couldn’t face the decision that me made so he sort of shut off from the world.

One of the themes I got from the film was the weird present/non-present relationships with family. For my generation a lot of us go away to school and never come back. For my dad, he loved going back home to Jacksonville. Sam had angst just going home to see his family.

AK: I think the movie is so much about what you’re saying. These are all characters that come from super complicated families. The message of the movie is that even broken families can be mended. No matter how far you from who you are, where you came from, or how attached you are, at the end of the day we’re all from where we come from. You can’t deny it, it’s part of who you are. What I loved so much was seeing these characters who were trying so hard to deny but come to realize by embracing it, they can move on with their lives and become a family.

Are you worried at all about the release date. June 29th you’ll be buried in the Summer Action Fiesta, and you’ll be going up against Magic Mike?

AK: Our audience is different. I think our audience is playing a hair older than that. This is an adult movie. Not everyone is a male stripper, but everyone is a part of a family. I think people can relate to it in a more universal way. My sense is audiences seem hungry for more this summer. There’s a bit of ‘What’s the next movie I’m going to care about in the theater?’ is the vibe I’m getting right now. I want to believe there’s an audience that’s excited to see a movie about real people and in some ways is going to reflect themselves. A movie that’s funny and emotional. We always talk about the best experience is when the lights come on and your sort of shaken like you just woke up from a dream. You forgot you were in a movie because you were so in the world of the movie, and that doesn’t happen very often. I do believe that people go to the movies, one way or another, to have an experience. Our movie is an experience of what it means to be part of a family.

One of my favorite scenes in the film is when Sam finds the money. He’s so excited and he reads the note [everybody laughs]. How did you do that without a single word?

CP: I love that scene. We talk about that scene a lot. First of all, I love Philip Baker Hall. Philip talks about hanging out with Jerry and the crazy times they had. [laughing] You look at Philip and he looks like he’s always been a great-grandfather. You can’t imagine Philip with the cocaine and the hookers. What I knew going into that is that Sam is so hungry at that point for cash. He’s so hungry at that point because he realizes the biggest deal of his life has gone south and he’s mired in so much debt. It’s like his lies unraveling. I thought two things – the thing that we found day [of the shoot] was that Philip gives me a shaving kit. If you got a shaving kit and someone said that’s what your father left you. Initially you’re like ‘It’s a [expletive] shaving kit. My father who I never talk to left me a shaving kit. What is it? A bunch of razors and a magic hair brush?’ [laughs]. I also thought there was some humor in that. It was knowing at that point of the film, Sam’s driving force is Sam. When he goes in that scene it’s like ‘Great to see you again. It was great. Where’s the money? Show me the money? I don’t care about your stories. I’m sure my dad was a great guy. Give me the money.’ I guess when I dialed into that, I was righteously ecstatic and relived when he sees the cash……

AK: You’re like ‘Maybe my dad didn’t just completely [expletive] me, then there’s this weird ‘What is this note?’ and we watch your face crash.

CP: It was a nice scene. It’s also one of the only scenes when you get a chance to see and hear what Jerry was like. I also thought ‘What a prick’. Here’s this lawyer that’s like ‘Your dad was such a neat guy’. Excuse me? I even get worked up talking about it now [laughs]

We’ve all dealt with people when they pass away and there’s nothing but good things to say about them. You think I knew that guy and he was kind of a dick, but no one can say that.

CP: I’m sort of excited to hear about you two. Your reactions to the film are hopefully why the film plays. You saw it and it made you think about your family. Your dad going home to Jacksonville, and your girlfriend had the same exact experience of what happens in the film. Some of the reactions have been people saying it’s such a unique film and there is a very small percentage of people who have relatives in their family who’ve lived a separate life. If you look into it, maybe the percentages aren’t humongous but it does exist. Lying does exist in crazy forms. Here’s is the scope and the polarity of the film. It makes you think about family.

You started with last scene. In your process, does that happen a lot?

AK: No, you aim to hit a note. You know where you want to end in general. This was a very unique case for me because that image struck me before I even knew what the story was. I felt so deeply about it when it hit me. I knew that there was so much story in that image, but I didn’t know how to get to it. I didn’t even know who the people where in the image. With movies that we typically write, there’s a lot of plot. You’re first and foremost thinking how to make it a character story but they’re all driven by the plot. In this one, the plot is the people and that’s it. It freed us up to write form a purely emotional place. It was just about these people being real. If it didn’t hit the note correctly, it wasn’t going to work. Over the 8 years that we wrote it, I feel so deeply in love with all the characters and I wanted to know how things would go for them. The funny thing about taking 8 years to write something and you’re not getting paid for it, you’re not writing for anybody else but yourself, you start to look around in the world and collect details. Whether it’s an overheard conversation in a coffee shop, or I’m sitting in traffic and I look over to see an apartment, it’s June and there’s old rusted Christmas bells on the door, and I think that’s Frankie’s door. You pick up little things along the way and they become so vivid and real. You have this beautiful mosaic of details from people’s lives. It was all about drawing from something truthful.

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate.